Driving in traffic routinely involves events and
incidents. Events are normal sequential maneuvers such as stopping for the
light, changing lanes, or putting on the brakes. Incidents are frequent but
unpredictable events. Some of these are dangerous and frightening, like near-misses, while others are merely annoying or depressing,
like missing one's turn or being insulted by a motorist. Driving events and
incidents are sources of psychological forces capable of producing powerful
feelings and irrational thought sequences.†
Driving is a highly dramatic activity that millions of people perform on
a routine daily basis.† The drama stems
from high risk and unpredictability.†
Driving has two conflictual structural components--predictability and
unpredictability.† Both are present all
of the time.† Predictability, like
maintaining steady speed in one's lane, creates safety, security, and escape
from disaster.† Unpredictability, like
impulsive lane changes without signaling, creates danger, stress, and
crashes.† For many people driving is
linked to the value of freedom of locomotion.†
On the one hand they get into cars and drive off where they please, the
very symbol of freedom and independence.†
But on the other hand, as they are ready to take off into the open, they
encounter restrictions and constrictions, preventing them from driving as they
wish due to regulations and congestion.

The following list identifies 15 widely known
conflictual aspects of driving that act as stressors.† These are emotional challenges that are
common occasions for expressing hostility and aggressiveness on highways and
streets.

1.Immobility:† Most of the body during driving remains still
and passive, not like walking where the entire body exerts effort and remains
continuously active.† Tension tends to
build up when the body is physically restricted and constricted.

2.Constriction:† Motor vehicles are restricted to narrow bands
of highway and street lanes.† In
congested traffic, one's progress is inevitably going to be continuously
blocked by numerous other cars.† Being
thwarted from going forward when you expect to, arouses the emotion of
restriction and constriction, and along with it, anxiety and the desire to
escape from the constriction.† This
anxiety and avoidance prompts drivers to perform risky or aggressive maneuvers
that get them and others into trouble.

3.Regulation:† Driving is a regulated activity, which means
that government agencies and law enforcement officers get to tell drivers how
fast to drive where, and how.† Cars and
trucks have powerful engines capable of going faster than what is
allowed--ever.† Drivers are punished for
violating these regulations which they are responsible for knowing and
obeying.† This imposition, though lawful
and necessary, arouses a rebellious streak in many people, which then allows
them to regularly disregard whatever regulations seem wrong to them at the time
or in the mood they are in.

4.Lack
of control:† Traffic
follows the laws that govern flow patterns like rivers, pipes, blood vessels,
and streaming molecules.† In congested
traffic, the flow depends on the available spaces around the cars, as can be
ascertained from an aerial view such as a traffic helicopter, or from a bridge
above the highway.† When one car slows
down, hundreds of other cars behind run out of space and must tap their brakes
to slow down or stop altogether, as in gridlock.† No matter how one drives, it's not possible
to beat the traffic waves, whose cause or origin starts miles from where you
are.† This lack of control over what
happens is frustrating, stress producing, and tends to lead to venting one's
anger on whoever is around--another driver, a passenger, a pedestrian, a
construction worker, the government.

5.Being
put in danger:† Cars
are loved by their owners and they are expensive to fix.† Even a scratch is stress producing because it
reduces the car's value and is expensive to repair. †Congested traffic filled with impatient and
aggressive drivers creates many hair raising close calls and hostile incidents
within a few minutes of each other.†
Physiological stress is thus produced, along with many negative
emotions--fear, resentment, rage, helplessness, bad mood, and depression.

6.Territoriality:† The symbolic portrayal of the car has tied it
to individual freedom and self-esteem, promoting a mental attitude of
defensiveness and territoriality.†
Motorists consider the space inside the car as their castle and the
space around the car as their territory.†
The result is that they repeatedly feel insulted or invaded while they
drive, lulling them into a hostile mental state, even to warlike postures and
aggressive reactions to routine incidents that are suddenly perceived as
skirmishes, battles, or duels between drivers.†
For many motorists, driving has become a dreaded daily drudge, an
emotional roller coaster difficult to contain and a source of danger and
stress.

7.Diversity:† There are about 200 million licensed drivers
in North America today, and they represent a diversity of drivers who vary
in experience, knowledge, ability, style, and purpose for being on the
road.† These social differences reduce
our sense of predictability because drivers with different ability and purpose
don't behave according to the expected norms.†
The peace and confidence of motorists is shaken by events that are
unexpected, and driving becomes more complex, more emotionally
challenging.† Diversity or plurality
increases stress because it creates more unpredictability.

8.Multi-tasking:† The increase in dashboard complexity and
in-car activities like eating, talking on the phone, checking voice e-mail,
challenge people's ability to remain alert and focused behind the wheel.† Drivers become more irritated at each other
when their attention or alertness seems to be lacking due to multi-tasking
behind the wheel.† Multi-tasking without
adequate training increases stress by dividing attention and reducing
alertness.

9.Denying
our mistakes:† Driving
is typically done by automatic habits compiled over years, and this means that
much of it is outside people's conscious awareness.† Typically drivers tend to exaggerate their
own "excellence," overlooking their many mistakes.† When passengers complain or, when other
drivers are endangered by these mistakes, there is a strong tendency to deny
the mistakes and to see complaints as unwarranted.† This denial allows drivers to feel
self-righteous and indignant at others, enough to want to punish and retaliate,
adding to the general hostility and stress level on highways.

10.Cynicism:† Many people have learned to drive under the
supervision of parents and teachers who are critical and judgmental.† We donít just learn to manipulate the vehicle;
we also acquire an over-critical mental attitude towards it.† As children we're exposed to this constant
judgmental behavior of our parents who drive us around.† It's also reinforced in movies portraying
drivers behaving badly.† This culture of
mutual cynicism among motorists promotes an active and negative emotional life
behind the wheel.† Negative emotions are
stress producing.

11.Loss
of objectivity:† Driving
incidents are not neutral:† there is
always someone who is considered to be at fault.† There is a natural tendency to want to
attribute fault to others rather than to self.†
This self-serving bias even influences the memory of what happened,
slanting the guilt away from self and laying it on others.† Drivers lose objectivity and right judgment
when a dispute comes up.† Subjectivity
increases stress by strengthening the feeling that one has been wronged.

12.Venting:† Part of our cultural heritage is the ability
to vent anger by reciting all the details of another individual's objectionable
behavior.† The nature of venting is such
that it increases by its own logic until it breaks out into overt hostility and
even physical violence.† It requires
motivation and self-training to bring venting under control before it explodes
into the open.† Until it's brought under
conscious control, venting is felt as an energizing "rush" and
promotes aggressiveness and violence.†
Nevertheless, this seductive feeling is short-lived and is accompanied
by a stream of anger-producing thoughts that impair our judgment and tempt us
into rash and dangerous actions.†
Repeated venting takes its toll on the immune system and acts as
physiological stress with injurious effects on the cardio-vascular system
(Williams and Williams, 1993).

13.Unpredictability:† The street and highway create an environment
of drama, danger, and uncertainty.† In
addition heat, noise and smells act as physiological stress and aggravate
feelings of frustration and resentment.†
Competition, hostility, and rushing further intensify the negative
emotions. †The driving environment has
become tedious, brutish, and dangerous, difficult to adjust to on the emotional
plane.

14.Ambiguity:† Motorists don't have an accepted or official
gestural communication language.† There
is no easy way of saying "Oops, I'm sorry!" as we do in a bank
line.† This allows for ambiguity to
arise:† "Did he just flip me off or
was that an apology?"† It would no
doubt help if vehicles were equipped with an electronic display allowing
drivers to flash pre-recorded messages.†
Lack of clear communication between motorists creates ambiguity, which
contributes to stress.

15.Undertrained
in emotional intelligence:†
Traditionally, driver education was conceived as acquainting students
with some general principles of safety, followed by a few hours of supervised
hands-on experience behind the wheel, or on a driving simulator.† Developing sound judgment and emotional
self-control were not part of the training, even though these goals were
mentioned as essential.† Most drivers
today are untrained or under-trained, in cognitive and affective skills.† Cognitive skills are good habits of thinking
and judgment.† Affective skills are good
habits of attitude and motivation.†
Drivers thus lack the necessary coping abilities such as how to cool off
when angered or frustrated, or how to cooperate with the traffic flow and not
hinder it.† This lack of training in
emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995) creates high stress conditions for most
drivers.

It is common to relate
aggressiveness to social and environmental factors, in addition to individual
personality factors.† For instance,
congestion on highways and anonymity in cars interact with faulty attitudes and
inadequate coping skills to produce aggressive traffic behavior under certain
identifiable critical conditions.† These
apparent triggering conditions are accidental because they are unpredictable,
and involve symbolic meaning for the dignity or self-worth of the interactants
who may later report having felt insulted or threatened.† It is part of popular psychology to call
these provocative and dramatic conditions "triggers" as in,
"It's not my fault. He provoked me.†
It's his fault. He made me do it."†
The trigger theory of anger serves to absolve the perpetrator from some
or all of the responsibility for the aggression or violence.† Here the attackers see themselves as the
victims through a self-serving speech act (Searle, 1969) by which they escape
culpability and opprobrium.† It is common
for road ragers to show no remorse for their assault and battery, seeing what
they did as justified and deserved.

For millions of people
driving has become a health risk, an economic risk, and a daily hassle, if not
tragedy.† The highway environment has
turned hostile and dangerous.† Government
regulation of traffic and transportation has vastly increased.† A dozen states have passed aggressive driving
bills that change what was merely a ticket and a
check, to a misdemeanor or a felony, with mandatory classes in how to manage
your traffic emotions.† Law enforcement
initiatives against aggressive drivers are called "aggressive
initiatives" while federal agencies are promoting the use of integrated
action between several forces, including helicopter support.† Society's war on aggressive driving appears
to be accelerating in the media and on the World Wide Web where numerous
activist groups promote citizen involvement in monitoring and reporting the
license plates of aggressive drivers.†
The appearance in this politicizing of aggressive driving is that
aggressive drivers are a group of dangerous people like car thieves or bank
robbers.† But my research on what drivers
think and feel behind the wheel convinces me that aggressive driving is a
cultural norm, not a deviant behavior.†
We acquire these hostile driving norms in childhood as passengers and as
adults, we practice the cultural habit and pass it on
to our children.† Individual differences
remain so that the frequency and modality of expressing hostility is
conditioned by social factors--gender, education, age, personality style,
demeanor, or conduct.† For instance, we
would expect gender differences in driving aggressiveness to be consistent with
cultural norms for violence in the family or workplace.† Some relevant findings from
a Web survey of 2010 respondents in 1988 (James, 1998).† They were responding to itemized lists of
driving behaviors often considered aggressive and illegal.† By checking an item, the respondent was
making a confession or a self-witnessing report "I sometimes engage in
this behavior."† By tabulating the
results in terms of demographic variables, one can explore various cultural
influences on specific forms of aggressive driving.

For each of these
aggressive driving behavior, more men report doing it than women.† The differences in percentage points are
statistically significant for all items.†
These results confirm what earlier surveys have found, that men drive
more aggressively than women and manifest road rage symptoms more
regularly.† However, popular surveys also
show a growing number of women are engaging in aggressive driving behavior and
are involved in a higher rate of non-fatal accidents than men (Woman Motorist,
1999).† The greater aggressiveness of men
drivers and the increasing aggressiveness of women drivers are cultural trends
reflecting an expanding permissiveness towards the expression of anger behind
the wheel.† Some of the rise in women's
aggressive driving is attributed to the increased presence of women in the
workplace.† There are 88 million licensed
women drivers in the U.S. today.† The
proportion of women in the driver population rose from 43 percent† in 1963 to 50 percent in 1999.† More women are stuck in congested traffic,
and more of the female gender experiences the stress and frustration men have
endured for decades.† Additionally, women
have more stops to make while they cart children to school, sports, and
lessons, as well as driving to work, running errands, shopping and
banking.† Women are forced to drive under
time pressure during congestion.† As a
result, auto insurance rates for young women are now closer to that of
inexperienced young men, who are still being charged 185 percent above the base
rate.

Health professionals generally attribute part of
the increase in driving "pugnacity" to social factors such as
swelling congestion, urbanization, dual-income families, workplace downsizing
that increases crowding, family discord, job dissatisfaction, and physical
illness.† The connection between stress
and illness has long been established in medicine and new research shows that
driving related stress is no different from life stress in the way it affects
our health (APA Monitor, 1996).† The
overt expression of anger and hostile behavior is normally
"inhibited" or kept under wraps because we are directly or indirectly
punished for it in various ways.† In the
past decade, public schools have implemented conflict resolution or peer
mediation programs designed to help children acquire the habit of resolving
disagreements non-physically, non-violently (Goleman, 1995).† The key element of this civilized conduct is
the skill of inhibiting the physical expression of anger or fear, so it doesn't
come out in provocative or violent behavior.†
When a neighbor encroaches upon your territory, normally you don't start
shooting or suing.† You first find out what's
going on, why, and what you can do about it peacefully and lawfully, such as
talking it over or lodging a complaint.†
This principle of non-aggressiveness has been thrown overboard by the
culture of cynicism on highways.† As
educators and change agents, we must find ways to restore it.

Perhaps the biggest
cause of unsafe highways is people's unwillingness to scrutinize their own
conduct, preferring to blame other drivers.†
Surveys consistently show that most people have an inflated self-image
of their motoring ability, rating the safety of their own driving as much
better than the average motorist's.† For
instance, two out of three drivers (67 percent) rate themselves almost perfect
in excellence as a driver (9 or 10 on a 10-point scale), while the rest
consider themselves above average (6 to 8).†
Surveys typically show that 70 percent of drivers report being a victim
of an aggressive driver, while only 30 percent admit to being aggressive
drivers.† This suggests that most drivers
overlook their own faults and overestimate their competence.† One way to examine this hypothesis is to
compare the aggressiveness of the two-thirds majority of drivers who rate
themselves as near perfect with the one-third minority that see themselves
"above average, but with some room to improve."

The difference is
dramatic!† The drivers
who considered themselves near perfect in excellence with no room for
improvement, also confess to significantly more aggressiveness than drivers who
see themselves still improving.† This reveals
the lack of objectivity in self-assessment shown by two out of three
drivers.† Despite their self-confessed
aggressiveness, they still insist on thinking of themselves as near perfect
drivers with almost no room to improve.†
This egocentric phenomenon can be seen in specific forms of aggressive
behaviors.† For example, those who see
themselves as near perfect drivers, admit to twice as much chasing of other
cars compared to those who see themselves as less perfect.† The difference:† 15 percent vs. 8 percent is statistically
significant.† The fact is clear:† part of being an aggressive driver is to deny
that you need to improve.† This is what I
call resistance to change.

In North America, cars have been mass produced for 103 years and there are
now 177 million licensed drivers in the United States alone. Driving is the most dangerous activity for the
majority of people in an industrialized society. Driving accidents have killed
millions of people since 1900 and the number of deaths and injuries increase in
proportion to the number of drivers and the total number of miles driven in an
area or region. In North
America, deaths and
serious injuries from driving accidents were reduced as a result of these
developments:

better
medical emergency services and infrastructure on highways and streets

thus, more survivors after crashes

better
law enforcement

including, more personnel, use
of electronic surveillance devices on highways and key intersections, new
legislation to facilitate the conviction of guilty drivers, greater involvement
of courts in remedial driver training for offenders

mandated
driver and safety education in schools

including graduated licensing
and other special provisions for elderly and handicapped drivers

Itís important to note that despite these
definite and significant improvements in the seven areas indicated, the rate of
traffic deaths and injuries remains relatively constant when viewed over a long
term perspective of years and decades. For instance, in the 1950s the annual
fatality rate due to driving accidents was around 50,000 while in the 1990s it
has been around 40,000. Yes, there is a reduction, but the curve has quickly
leveled off and remains above 40,000 deaths and over 5 million injuries
annually in the U.S. There seem to be two opposing forces operating.

On the one hand, the external environmental
forces for greater safety (less risk):

∑The
construction of more and better highways to accommodate the increasing numbers
of drivers every year

∑The design
of better and safer vehicles

∑A more
efficient medical infrastructure to handle victims of crashes

∑Greater
use of highway law enforcement and electronic surveillance as deterrents

And on the other hand, the internal individual
forces for maintaining high risk (less safety):

∑The
widespread acceptance of a competitive norm that values getting ahead of other
drivers

∑The daily
round schedule of time pressure and its mismanagement through rushing and
disobeying traffic laws

∑The
weakness of driver education programs so that most drivers have inadequate
training in emotional self-control as drivers

∑The media
portrayal of aggressive driving behaviors in a fun context

∑The
psychological tendency to maintain a preferred level of risk, so that increased
risks are taken when environmental improvements are introduced (also called
"risk homeostasis", see Wilde, 1994; 1988)

Scientists and safety officials attribute this
resistance to accident reduction to the attitude and behavior of drivers who
tend to respond to safety improvements by driving more dangerously. It has been
noted that a critical aspect of driving is the driverís competence in balancing
risk with safety. The risk in driving is largely under the control of the
driver. The driver decides at every moment what risks to take and what to
inhibit or avoid. Risk taking is a tendency that varies greatly between drivers
as well as for the same driver at different times. Thus, if a road is made
safer by straightening it, or by moving objects that interfere with visibility,
drivers will compensate for the greater safety by driving faster on
it—the so-called "risk homeostasis" phenomenon. The result is
the maintenance of a constant subjective feeling of risk that is the normal
habitual threshold for a particular driver. In such a driving environment, the
rate of deaths or injuries tends to remain high, despite the safety improvements
that are introduced.

The institutional or societal response to this
stalemate between safety and risk tolerance, has been
to increase enforcement activities by monitoring, ticketing, and jailing
hundreds of thousands of drivers. Nevertheless, the number of deaths and
injuries has remained nearly steady, year after year. Besides law enforcement,
there has been an increase in litigation due to aggressive driving disputes
between drivers, as well as more psychotherapy and counseling services,
including anger management clinics and workshops, and community initiatives.
Nevertheless, these remain scattered attempts, and have been unable to alter
basic driving patterns.† As detailed in
this chapter, socio-cultural methods need to be used to change the driving
norms of an entire generation.

Driver education and training continue to focus
on imparting a minimum knowledge of safety principles and of vehicle operation
and manipulation.† Courses and manuals
generally include a brief section on "driver attitude" and
"driver error" and this practice constitutes an acknowledgment that
personality habits of the driver ought to be addressed in the instructional
process.† My research efforts have
addressed this behavioral component, and to allow specific recognition of this
subject in driver education and training, I have proposed the phrase
"driving psychology" to represent this new driver instruction
area.† Driving psychology refers to the
knowledge drivers need to cumulate throughout their career as driver--between
six and seven decades for most people in North America.† This knowledge is
thus focused on self-instructional methods as reflected by the new paradigm
called "Lifelong Driver Self-Improvement Program" consisting of a K
through 12 driving psychology curriculum followed by lifelong membership in a
QDC (Quality Driving Circle) (James and Nahl, 2000).

Driving psychology is a behavioral engineering
tool.† Research in driving psychology
uses the self-witnessing approach, which is a method of generating objective
data on oneself as a driver (James, 1996).†
The driver operates in three separate but interacting behavioral areas
known as affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor.† In other words, it takes the motive of a goal
destination (affective domain) to keep the car moving, as well as a variety of
related motives (affective) such as the desire (affective) to avoid a collision
or the emotion of anger (affective) at another driver.† Besides this, it takes knowledge (cognitive
domain) of vehicle operation and traffic regulations to get through, besides
making judgments (cognitive) about what other motorists are likely to do or not
to do.† And finally, it also takes the
coordinated execution or performance (sensorimotor domain) of movements in
appropriate response to the motive and the judgment.† These three behavioral domains jointly and
interactively constitute driving or traffic behavior.† My proposal for Lifelong Driver
Self-Improvement Training has the purpose of empowering drivers to take charge
of their habit structures in these three behavioral areas.

The new driving psychology and the older traffic
psychology represent distinct paradigms to the study of driver behavior, as was
anticipated by the distinction between input-output relations and those
involving internal states (Michon, 1985). Input-output models use taxonomies or
inventories based on task analyses, as well as functional control models of a
mechanistic nature. Internal state models use trait analyses of drivers and
their motivational-cognitive context. Michon (1985, p. 490) considers the
input-output models as "behavioral" while the internal states models
are termed "psychological." However, driving psychology views the
affective and cognitive areas as equally behavioral to the sensorimotor.
Inventories of driver tasks have so far been based on external or public
observation and description of driving performance (McKnight and Adams, 1970).
The self-witnessing approach is a way of obtaining internal behavioral data,
sometimes called "private data."

Driving psychology is the study of the
social-psychological forces that act upon drivers in traffic. Situations are
analyzed through external as well as internal methods of data gathering. For
example, in one study the aggressiveness of drivers was measured in terms of
observed rate of speed reduction, or the making of some hostile gesture at
pedestrians in a marked crosswalk. It was found that aggressiveness of both men
and women drivers was higher against men pedestrians
than women pedestrians. This is an instance of the external analysis of driver
behavior. In another study, drivers spoke their thoughts out loud into a tape
recorder giving their perceptions and reactions to traffic events and
incidents. It was found that the average trip from home and work is filled with
many incidents that arouse feelings of hostility and thoughts of mental
violence (James, 1987). This is an instance of the driver's internal behavior.
An approach that involves both internal and external analyses consists of
interviewing drivers about their driving, either "in depth" or on a
questionnaire, and relating it to their self-witnessing records. One may also
have observers independently make observations of drivers who are making
self-witnessing tapes, which also allows the correlation or concurrence of
external and internal data.

Personality and character are related to a
driver's style of coping with traffic stress. Acts, thoughts, and feelings in
driving interact in an integrated system. A driving trip typically involves the
presence of a dominant motive such as the feeling of being in a rush, or the
desire to outplay other drivers by getting ahead of them. The dominant motive
(affective domain) is a character tendency that expresses itself in other
settings as well. For example, a person may experience hostile thoughts
(cognitive behavior) towards others wherever competition is at work, whether a
bank line, a restaurant, or switching traffic lanes (sensorimotor domain). Data
on the private world of drivers show that frustration begets anger, which leads
to feelings of hostility that are elaborated in mental violence and ridicule,
and finally acted out in aggressive behavior.†
It is evident that the aggressive behavior is an outward consequence of
an inner interplay between the negative feeling and its conscious justification
or condoning.† This threefold aspect of
driving behavior is at the center of driving psychology.

The topics of driving psychology often overlap
with traffic psychology or applied psychology, but the method of generating the
data are distinctive.† One example is the
study of risk taking in driving (Wilde, 1994). Few traffic situations are
without risk. Drivers are constantly involved with this risk. Incidents occur
all the time and the threat involved is experienced as stress. Reduction of
traffic stress is a major concern for both driving psychology and applied
traffic psychology. In the old paradigm methods include extending traffic
safety education to children, providing driver education for adolescents, and
continuing driver education for adults through courses, legislation, and public
media campaigns. Driving psychology adds a new major component to these
methods, namely the idea that driver training is lifelong self-training, and
that it involves training our emotional habits in traffic, our thinking habits
behind the wheel, and our style or overt actions for which we are legally and
socially responsible.

Educators and test makers have used the thinking
out loud verbalizations of college students to study their problem solving
abilities (Bloom, 1956). Meichenbaum and Goodman (1979) and Watson and Tharp
(1985) have made use of silent verbalizations in the form of self-regulatory
sentences that mediate and control the overt performance of students and
clients in need of greater self-control of their behavior in many areas (Luria,
1961). Abelson (1981) has proposed script analysis as a method of
reconstructing the cognitive activities that underlie routine behaviors such as
ordering food in a restaurant.† Ericsson
and Simon (1984) have described their extensive attempts in protocol analysis
which involves the tape recording of a subject's thinking aloud routine while
engaged in problem solving activity of specific tasks (e.g., solving a chess
problem).† This work allowed Simon to
create the first chess playing computer program by rendering each thinking
sequence into a program line.† More
recently, the MIT media lab is known to be creating computers that not only
model human cognitive processes but affective as well (Picard, 1997). These
research and clinical efforts represent significant advances in the scientific
study of the private world of individuals. The self-witnessing technique I developed is an attempt to obtain
reliable data on the ongoing events in the private world of drivers. This
psychological aspect of driving has not received attention in the extensive
literature of driving or auto safety. The method was also used in the analysis
of self-witnessing reports written by students while engaged in doing library
research or using Web search engines (Nahl, 1998; 1997; Nahl and James, 1996).

The self-witnessing method is readily meaningful
to people since they are routinely expected in their daily lives as part of
being ordinary humans or citizens, to be able to report on their own activities
(What did you do?† Who was there? etc.) and mental focus (What did
you think?† What did you feel? etc.).† Drivers
readily discuss many aspects of their driving behavior, external and internal.
For example, when people are asked to write an introduction about themselves as
drivers, they spontaneously mention various aspects about themselves such as
how long they have been driving; what kind of cars they can drive (gear shift
or automatic); how driving affects everyday life (its costs, dangers,
frustrations, stress); what images they project as a driver (power, status,
lifestyle); whether they consider themselves to be a good or bad driver; how
they react to common driving situations; how their mood changes as a result of
driving episodes; how the traffic went on a particular trip; their driving
record (traffic tickets, accidents, near misses); and some others. These are
thus dimensions of discrimination along which drivers spontaneously monitor
themselves, or have the conviction that they monitor themselves. These beliefs
may be called the driver's self-image, or the reputation of oneself as a
driver.† There is a lot of protective
territoriality or face work defensiveness associated with these beliefs about
oneself.

Interviews with drivers, or written
self-assessment scales filled out by drivers, yield retrospective data in which
the respondents' recollection of facts is mixed with their self-image as
drivers. By contrast, self-witnessing reports yield data that are not
retrospective but on-going or concurrent.†
The driver behind the wheel speaks out loud into a recorder at the very
moment that the emotions, thoughts, perceptions, and actions arise
spontaneously and concurrently with the act of driving. Later analysis of the
tape and transcript displays in concrete and visible terms, the overt
expressions of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions that accompanied a particular
driving episode.† This method does not
claim to obtain a complete and accurate "online transaction log" of
the driver's affective states and cognitive processes, but only a sample of these.† The adequacy of the sample needs to be
evaluated theoretically and practically. The initial effort in driving
psychology has been the attempt to develop a taxonomy of driving behavior so
that there might be a theoretically justified classification system capable of
listing driver behaviors in the three domains and at relative levels of
attainment or development.

In its modern version, behaviorism is committed to a unified
theory that tries to deal with external and internal aspects of the self
(Staats, 1975; Mischel, 1991). For instance, the concept of personality is
defined in terms of built-up repertoires of basic habits. These are actually
skills and errors that can be modified through further learning. This
acquisition process is going on in three distinct domains of the person's
activity: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor.† All skills at any level of expertise contain
affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor features.† The following transcript segment from a
driver's taped self-witnessing record illustrates the threefold nature of
driving behavior.

"Oh, no, there's
a police car coming up from behind. I hope he didn't see me driving fast.
Besides, I'm not the only one who is driving fast. If he pulls me over to the
side, he has to pull everyone else over too. I'll be so embarrassed if he pulls
me over. Everyone will know that I was breaking the law."

Content analysis focuses on the "speech
act" value of the components of verbalizations (Searle, 1969; Nahl, 1993).
For instance, "Oh, no" marks an affective stricture or a perception
of doom; and indexes an emotional flooding-out. "I hope" marks a
religious affection or an idealized picture of reality. "Besides, I'm not
the only one" bespeaks guilt and self-justification; it raises the specter
of personal catastrophe expressed in "I'll be so embarrassed... Everyone
will know..." A little later this subject displays affections of
condemnation or disapproval when another car cut in front: "Careless and
pushy drivers always do things like that." In another episode, this person
expresses anxiety and fear: "I almost sideswiped a car which had been
traveling in my blind spot. As I was turning back into the middle lane I was in
a state of mild anxiety. Thinking about what could've happened made me scared."
Thus, expressing fear in a driving incident or, showing disapproval of another
driver, are instances of affective driving
behavior.† An individual's internal
dialog can be used as an index of the affective states and the cognitive
processes that constitute the internal component of any outward behavior.

"I should cut
down on how fast I'm driving and maintain the required speed limit. I'm in the
middle lane and yet I'm driving like an aggressive person in the left lane. I
could be increasing my chance of becoming a victim on the road. If the police
pulls me over and gives me a ticket it's nobody else's fault but my own. I
should follow the rules. I don't want others to get a bad impression of me and
think that I'm a speed demon."

Reasoning about propriety is evident in "I
should maintain the proper speed limit" and "I'm driving like an
aggressive person" which also indicates self-evaluation
("aggressive"). Propriety as well as morality scales are involved in
the driver's reasonings regarding the self-attribution of error. ("It's
nobody else's fault but my own"), while the entry "I don't want
others to get a bad impression of me" reveals this person's image
management techniques.† In the following
entry the driver seems to be overwhelmed with the reasoned consequences of his
action:

"I'm thinking to
myself I could have killed the guy back there. I'm so careless. He must be
swearing at me and saying what an idiot I am. I could've smashed up my
brother's car."

Note that this self-analysis includes imagining
what the others are thinking, feeling, or saying ("He must be
swearing...").† Witnessing and
describing one's reasoning about a driving situation, or attributing an error
to oneself, provide data on the driver's cognitive behavior.† In the next segment the driver is giving some
details on sensorimotor behavior, including the sensation of getting warmer.

"I'll drive at
the required speed limit and get to my destination safely. I'm leaning slightly
forward in my seat rather than my normal slightly reclined position. I have
both hands on the steering wheel rather than my normal one hand. And I can feel
my temperature rising.† My stomach feels
queasy."

Some of this sensory or motor information might
be available to special instrumentation, a well-placed camera, or an observer
riding along ("I am leaning slightly forward in my seat"), but the
meaning of this act would remain obscure without the concurrent self-witnessing
report ("rather than my normal slightly reclined
position"--indicating a perception
of abnormalcy in the sensation) or would require enormously sophisticated
instrumentation ("My stomach feels queasy").† Witnessing and describing sensations or motor
actions provide data on the driver's sensorimotor behavior.

My cumulative research using the self-witnessing
reports of hundreds of drivers, reveals an agitated
inner world of driving that is replete with extreme emotions and impulses
seemingly triggered by little acts. Ordinary drivers can display maniacal
thoughts, violent feelings, virulent speech, and physiological signs of high
stress.

This incident involved a car cutting into the
lane and forcing the driver to slam on the brakes causing a chain reaction;
however, no collision occurred.† The
self-witnessing reports of drivers routinely contain scary incidents of this
sort in which near misses occur. Hence it has become normal and usual for
drivers to experience stress and panic under everyday traffic conditions.† The following is a summary of the variety of
negative reactions routinely mentioned in driver self-witnessing reports.

paranoic thinking that
one is being followed or inspected, addressing other drivers who are not within
ear shot, script writing scenarios involving vengeance and cruelty against
"guilty" drivers, denial of reality and defensiveness when a
passenger complains of a driver's error, psychopathic interactions as when two
drivers alternately tailgate each other dangerously at high speed.

These findings raise an important public issue:
What is the mental health of the nearly two hundred million licensed drivers in
North America? Demographic sampling research with the self-witnessing
method is needed to assess the generality of my early findings. We need to
create behavioral maps of drivers under varying social and psychological
conditions in order to construct a comprehensive theory of driving behavior
within the language of drivers, not the language of scientists.† Managing the future of driving in our society
requires a knowledge of driving psychology because it provides the content
needed by instructors, safety officials, law enforcement, and all regulatory
agencies in society that administer roads, cars, and drivers.† I use the phrase "driving informatics"
(Nahl, 1999) to cover the entirety of information sources society now needs to
manage its expanding driving and automotive environment.

To supply the information needed for driving
informatics, future research may investigate the conditions which foster the
greater internalization of compliance in driving behavior. This may be done by
having drivers give self-witnessing reports under various independently
manipulated situations, such as:

∑driving
in the right lane vs. the left lane

∑driving
to work regularly (going with the traffic) vs. by watching the speedometer and
staying within posted speed limits

∑driving
alone vs. driving with one or more friends

∑driving
in heavy traffic vs. light traffic

∑driving
while in a hurry after a quarrel with someone vs. other mental states

These independently manipulated environmental
and experiential contrasts will reveal how a driver's feelings, thoughts,
perceptions, verbalizations, and actions (the dependent conditions or
variables) are influenced by highway conditions such as traffic density or
driver aggressiveness, or by mental states such as "when the driver feels
pressured" vs. "when the driver feels happy" (the independent
conditions or variables). Staats (1996) has explicitly recognized the
possibility of designing experiments in which affective and cognitive states
are manipulated as independent variables to study their effects on other
cognitive-affective behaviors as dependent variables.† In one project, I compared the
self-witnessing reports of students in which the intervention treatment (or
independent manipulation) was to drive within speed limits for one week. The
dependent measures were self-witnessing reports for the affective, cognitive,
and sensorimotor domains of their driving behavior (threefold self). During the
week of self-imposed driving within speed limits, students commonly reported
extreme paranoic feelings and thoughts (e.g., "Everybody is giving me the
stink eye for holding them up. They are going to attack me, ram me off the
road") -- which did not appear in the baseline records while the students
were driving regularly (by keeping up with traffic). This type of
baseline-intervention design is quite flexible and productive when coupled with
random assignment of subjects to predefined conditions to allow for statistical
tests of significance.

The development of a comprehensive driving
theory based on self-witnessing reports makes it possible to construct a
classification scheme or taxonomy that can help identify the components of
driver behavior from the perspective of the driver's world. Such an inventory
may be useful for driver assessment and driver education and can provide norms
or expectations of driving skills and errors in the affective, cognitive, and
sensorimotor domains of behavior. For instance, a driver's self-witnessing
report may be analyzed by counting the presence of affective errors (e.g.,
"I was so mad I didn't care if I was going to hit him or not!"),
cognitive errors (e.g., "I figured there is no speed limit in this parking
lot cause I don't remember seeing any speed limit signs here."), and
sensorimotor errors (e.g., "I lowered my window and yelled at him, 'You
stupid idiot.'"). A driver's error score can be obtained to evaluate the
effect of various intervention programs for driver self-improvement. Or, error
patterns may be correlated with demographic or psychological characteristics of
drivers (e.g., men vs. women, or contrasting age groups). These types of data
are valuable for efforts in the modeling of driver behavior, especially those
involving higher control mechanisms which include motivational and trait
related aspects (Picard, 1997). As Michon (1985, p.488) has argued, driver
research should go cognitive (and I would add, affective) since human mobility
is embedded in a psycho-social environment as well as a technological one.
Feelings, thoughts, and perceptions are as much traffic and transportation
issues as road conditions and traffic flow.

Table
1† Driver
Behavior as Skills and Errors in Three Behavioral Domains

PRIVATE SKILLS (+)

AFFECTIVE (+A)

COGNITIVE (+C)

SENSORIMOTOR (+S)

I've got to be careful here. Don't want to cut
anybody off.

This person looks like he's in a hurry to get
in. I better let him in.

Table 1 shows the first iteration of the
taxonomy in its general form and structure.†
Driving behavior is represented as a collection of skills and errors
within the three behavioral domains of the self.† The skills receive a + symbol and the errors
a - symbol.† Entries within each
behavioral area are self-witnessing units culled or isolated from the driver's
self-report.† Categorization of an item
is a matter of common sense, following speech act rules known by ordinary
speakers (Searle, 1969).† I have
encountered no drivers who were unable to report their emotions, thoughts, and
actions in traffic.† Yet there are
individual differences I observed in detail, focus, comprehensiveness, and
clarity.† Future research should
investigate the self-witnessing data generated by drivers in terms of these
variables.† As driver self-witnessing
becomes a generational norm and cultural practice for all drivers, the richness
and depth of the accumulating data will increase, giving us the ability to
construct even better driving theories and self-training procedures.

The
second iteration of the taxonomy introduces three levels of development
or driver competence (1, 2, 3) within the three behavioral domains (A,
C, S) and the two skill orientations (+ vs. -).† Three behavioral domains by three
developmental levels yields a matrix of nine zones of
possible driver behaviors.† Adding a + or
- orientation yields a total of 18 behavioral zones.† The numbering scheme in the taxonomy follows
the pattern shown in Table 2.

Table
2. Classification Scheme for the Taxonomy of Driver Behavior

Level 3

Responsibility

Affective

+A3 = 7
-A3 = 16

Cognitive

+C3 = 8
-C3 = 17

Sensorimotor

+S3 = 9
-S3 = 18

Level 2

Safety

Affective

+A2 = 4
-A2 = 13

Cognitive

+C2 = 5
-C2 = 14

Sensorimotor

+S3 = 6
-S3 = 15

Level 1

Proficiency

Affective

+A1 = 1
-A1 = 10

Cognitive

+C1 = 2
-C1 = 11

Sensorimotor

+S1 = 3
-S1 = 12

I like to represent the taxonomy from bottom up
to indicate that habits are built on top of habits, and the higher habits are
acquired later in experience, but once established, they exert a causative
(downward) influence on the lower habits.†
The three domains at Level 1 occupy Zones 1, 2, and 3, respectively, in
relation to skills, and Zones 10, 11, and 12, for errors.† Similarly for Levels 2 and
3.† The Zones 1 through 9
represent skills, and their corresponding errors populate zones 10 through
18.† The labeling of the three levels
should be considered as part of the theory and as research continues, evidence
will evolve to allow more accurate representations of each level.† For now, I present this iteration as the
results of my studies thus far.† Level 1
driving behavior is labeled "Proficiency" to represent the new
driver's initial overriding focus on three things:† staying calm and alert (affective
proficiency), figuring out what happens around you (cognitive proficiency), and
coordinating the eyes, hands, and legs to keep the vehicle from colliding
(sensorimotor proficiency).† Level 2 is
labeled "Safety" to represent the motive to avoid getting into
trouble (affective safety), in conjunction with the problem-solving process of
identifying trouble spots (cognitive safety), and leading to prudent actions
(sensorimotor safety).† Level 3 is
labeled "Responsibility" to represent the motive to remain
accountable for hurting others (affective responsibility), which creates
prosocial rather than antisocial thought sequences and plans (cognitive
responsibility) that eventuate in the quality of driving life, whether happy or
stressed out (sensorimotor responsibility).†
The full taxonomy is shown in Table 3.

The labeling of each behavioral zone is part of
the theory and will need additional confirmation by more extensive research
than what I have been able to do so far.†
To clarify the theory further, I present in Appendix A
several entries for each of the 18 zones.†
For example, zone 1 Affective Proficiency (A1) has a skill item
"Having a sense of respect for traffic regulations and authority."
(Zone +A1), while the corresponding error item is "Feeling
dislike for traffic regulations or authority figures" (Zone -A1).† Similarly, zone 8 Cognitive Responsibility
(C3) has a skill item "De-dramatizing or
neutralizing one's negative feelings in a driving situation" (Zone +C3),
while the corresponding error item is "Attaching preposterous symbolic
significance to driving exchanges (e.g., being overtaken is
reprehensible)." (Zone -C3)† Every
behavioral skill zone has a corresponding error zone.† A driver may be represented as a collection
of skills and errors, each of which is a habit that can be witnessed in
oneself, and modified with appropriate habit modification procedures.† This process of habit self-modification going
on simultaneously in each of the 18 zones is what I call Lifelong Driver
Self-Improvement Program.† Therefore the
QDC curriculum is based on self-witnessing activities in the 18 zones. For more
explanations see this related article.

An illustration of how
the Driver Taxonomy can be used for planning and monitoring self-improvement
activities is shown in Table 4.† I call this
type of radical overhaul in old habit structures, a driving personality
makeover.† This driver used the taxonomy
to map out a self-modification plan that wisely contained two stages. First, to
do what it takes to avoid being an aggressive driver.† Second, to do what it takes to become the
opposite of an aggressive driver, namely a supportive driver.† He decided to list for himself the behavioral
objectives in the three domains, without keeping track of the level.† He correctly decided that the first step is
affective, in this case, to "overcome his resistance to change" and
picked several affective objectives that counteract his habitual aggressive
driving motives and tap into his higher value system, which he believed he had
in reserve.† Under the prodding of this
new motive, he picked several cognitive objectives that gave him practice in
counteracting his lack of objectivity when thinking about driving situations in
which was involved.† Finally, the new
motive through the new reasoning process, must actualize
in civil behavior, or else it is only an imagined change.† So he had to pick relevant sensorimotor
objectives to actualize the new persona.†
This he did as shown in Table 4.

Table
4.† Two Stages of a Driving Personality
Makeover Plan

Stage 1--Avoiding Being an Aggressive Driver

Affective LevelOvercoming my resistance to change

†

Cognitive LevelLearning to do rational analyses of traffic
incidents

Sensorimotor LevelActing out civil behavior

∑committing myself to inhibit or
mitigate states of anger and retaliation

∑making it acceptable for passenger to
complain or make suggestions

∑making it unacceptable for myself to
ridicule or demean other drivers

∑activating higher motives within myself
such as love of order and fair play, public spiritedness, charity, kindness
to strangers

∑feeling responsible for errors and
seeking opportunities to make reparations

∑feeling regret at my unfriendly
behaviors and impulses

∑feeling good about behaving with
civility or kindness

∑feeling appreciation when being given
advice by passenger

∑being forgiving of others' mistakes and
weaknesses

∑acknowledging and knowing my driving
errors

∑planning and rehearsing the
modification of those habits

∑analyzing other drivers' behaviors
objectively or impartially

∑anticipating the needs of other drivers
and being helpful to them

∑verbalizing nice sentiments

∑enjoying the ride and relaxing

The second stage is
the mature stage because what he had to "force himself" to avoid
doing in stage 1, he now enjoyed doing in stage 2.† This is truly a changeover.† The supportive orientation involves a
prosocial driving persona that is balanced and objective in thinking, and
non-competitive and helpful in behaving.†
It is associated with a maximum of safety and a minimum of stress while
restoring the sense of fun and enjoyment to driving.† Once such a plan is drawn up, which can only
be done with self-study or instruction and counseling, its execution involves a
strategy I call "the Threestep Program."† Each item on the self-modification plan is
practiced one at a time per driving trip.

∑First
step:† Acknowledging that I have this
particular negative habit. (A)

∑Second
step:† Witnessing myself performing this
negative habit. (W)

∑Third
step:† Modifying this habit. (M)

For example, having
picked the item "feeling regret at my unfriendly behaviors and
impulses" for today's trip to work on,
constitutes step 1, because selecting it is an act of acknowledgment.† Then, the driver has to witness this behavior
during the trip.† In other words, he
stays alert, maintaining focus on his emotions as he drives.† As soon as he detects the presence of hostile
feelings, he follows it up with sentiments of regret.† The normal habit would be to give in to the
initial hostile impulse, to magnify it, to rehearse it several times.† All these habitual procedures are now
interfered with and interrupted by means of the sentiments of regret
introjected into the event in accordance with the plan.† This constitutes the modification.† When the threestep process is practiced on
repeated trips, the old habit sequence gradually weakens and is replaced by a
new positive habit sequence.† The
cyclical process is repeated item by item.†
It is apparent from this why driver self-improvement needs to go on a
lifelong basis, and why social methods of motivation like QDC groups, are
needed to help drivers to persist in it and not give up.

Promoting
Quality Driving Circles (QDCs) as a socio-cultural method for building up
the motivation of drivers to practice lifelong self-modification
activities.

∑This includes a national or regional
program of incentives, awards, and benefits for drivers who maintain their QDC
activities.

∑It also includes providing guidance
through instructional materials such as TEE Cards, Keeping Track Forms, Logs or
Schedules that assist individuals in their driving exercises.

∑These Forms may also be made available
anonymously to scientists who can use them as a continuous source of data for
studying driver behavior on a long term basis. This type of research will
assist government officials and agencies to continue the effective management
of driving on a permanent basis.

Increasing
peopleís awareness and focusing public attention on the social
implications of car society, car talk, car attitudes and behaviors,
through content analysis of

∑Accounts
(or stories) drivers give when telling what happened

∑Messages
drivers write in electronic discussion groups

∑Newspaper
accounts of driving incidents and duels

∑Public or
media portrayals of drivers and driving (including books and advertisings)

∑Other
sources that access the thoughts and feelings of people about driving

Analysis of Internet
Newsgroups about driving and cars with participants from North America,
Britain, Australia, and Singapore, has shown that aggressive and hostile
attitudes among drivers is universal and transcends ethnic background (James,
2000).† The psychological mechanisms that
justify this hostility may vary from culture to culture. It is necessary
therefore to develop culture-specific methods of social influence to bring
about a change in norms of competition and hostility.

†

Building
inventories and taxonomies of affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor
driving behaviors to guide scientists and safety officials, and to help
define the content of public instruction and other educational materials
for self-improvement efforts. Current inventories of driving behaviors in North America have
been obtained through various methods, including:

∑condoning
aggressiveness, disrespect, and the expression of hostility

∑These affective norms are negative and
anti-social. Socio-cultural methods must be used to reduce the attractiveness
of these aggressive norms and to increase the attractiveness of positive and
cooperative driver roles.

The
primary cognitive driving norms are:

∑inaccurate
risk assessment

∑biased and
self-serving explanations of driving incidents

∑lack of
emotional intelligence as a driver

∑low or
underdeveloped level of moral involvement (dissociation and egotism)

∑These cognitive norms are inaccurate and
inadequate. Self-training and self-improvement techniques must be taught so
that drivers can better manage risk and regulate their own emotional behavior.

The
primary sensorimotor driving norms are:

∑automatized
habits (un-self-conscious or unaware of oneís style and risk)

∑These sensorimotor norms are inadequate
and immature. Lifelong driver self-improvement exercises are necessary to reach
more competent habits of driving.

Driving
norms and behavior can be changed by socio-cultural management techniques
that create in the driver a desire for change, by weakening negative norms
and strengthening positive norms of driving.† Since driving is a habit in three
domains of behavior, driving self-improvement is possible and effective in
improving this habit. Specific elements in each domains
must be addressed in recognition of the fact that driving consists of
thousands of individual habits or skills, each of which can be identified,
tested, and improved, on a long term basis.

Drivers
maintain strong resistance to externally imposed restrictions and
regulations so that these methods alone are not sufficient to create real
changes in driver behavior. Socio-cultural methods of influence need to be
used, such as QDCs (Quality Driving Circles).† Driving Psychology uses socio-cultural
methods that act as change agents. Group dynamic forces are powerful
influencing agents that can overcome driversí resistance to change. This
is achieved by group activities that focus on this resistance in an
explicit way, and afterwards, are put into conscious practice through follow
up self-witnessing activities behind the wheel. These informal groups are
called QDCs (Quality Driving Circles) and their function is to exert a
long term or permanent socio-moral influence on the driving quality of its
members. This positive influence is exerted by members on each other when
they adhere to a Standard QDC Curriculum, as approved by designated safety
officials or agencies on a regional or national basis. The QDC Curriculum
is created through the principles of driving psychology.

Driving
is a semi-conscious activity since much of it depends on automatized
habits acquired through culture and experience over several years. Thus,
the driverís self-assessment is not objective or accurate, until trained
in objective self-assessment procedures.

Driving
inherently involves taking risks, making errors, and losing emotional
self-control. Thus, drivers need to be trained in risk taking, error
recovery, and emotional control under emergency or provocation conditions.

Obtaining
a driverís license cannot be considered the end of driver training.
Continued driver training in the form of guided lifelong self-improvement
activities is essential for acquiring new skills. These new skills are
needed as driving gets more complex with technology such as managing car audio devices , reading maps on screens ,
using computers , note taking , talking on phone or radio , keeping to a
schedule , eating, etc.† The
Standard QDC Curriculum (Quality Driving Circles) needs to be kept
up-dated continuously and the latest additions are to be made available to
all functioning QDCs in a region. These up-dates are to focus on new
developments that technology brings to vehicles and roads, all of which
require the acquisition of new skills by drivers.

Driving Psychology is an applied field that
creates a popular language of behavioral thinking about driving as a societal
issue. This issue is complex and overlaps with technical and non-technical
intellectual environments. The language and ideas in driving psychology are
scientifically sound and accurate. However, it is not a basic science like
psychology and does not follow its rigor in application. The theory and
concepts of driving psychology can freely be borrowed from existing fields of
study:

The language of driving psychology is adapted to
specific populations and purposes. Driving psychology principles and programs
are cast in a popularized but scientific language that is suitable for people
of different educational level, age, and experience. In order for driver
management programs to be effective, the drivers involved must be motivated to
cooperate on their own. The desire for cooperation must stem from their
understanding and acceptance. Understanding must be instructed, and acceptance
must be won. The less perception of coercion, the greater the
need for voluntary compliance, which depends on adequate understanding.
Internal motivation for lifelong driver self-improvement is effective and
dependable, but externally imposed rules are less effective and dependable.

The concepts and methods of driving psychology
have to be clear to the drivers or trainees involved. Driving psychology
maintains an internal rhetoric of persuasion designed to empower drivers to
overcome their spontaneous inner resistance to its principles. It is to be
expected that drivers will experience feelings of resistance to the principles
of driving psychology. A major reason is that driving psychology involves
self-assessment and self-modification, both of which are painful to most
people. There is a natural and predictable resistance to changing automatized
habits in the sensorimotor domain. There is resistance to changing cognitive
norms of evaluating and judging other drivers. There is resistance to giving up
affective norms of hostility and self-assertiveness as a driver. Driving
psychology predicts the forms of the internal resistance and provides drivers with
socio-cultural methods they can use for overcoming their own internal
resistance to change.

Driving Psychology is now in the beginning
stages and is still evolving in content and method, in response to the new need
for managing driving behavior in an industrialized society. The goal of driving
psychology is to reverse the natural trend of escalating accidents that occur
with a sharp increase in the number of drivers and miles driven. The escalation
of accidents, injuries, and their financial cost is a preventable phenomenon,
but it requires socio-cultural interventions by government, social agencies,
and citizen organizations. It is not preventable or containable by law
enforcement methods alone because these are external coercion mechanisms that
have only a limited effect. Drivers will revert to aggressive driving styles
when detection by police can be avoided. Compliance is dependent on
surveillance.

On the other hand, it is possible to use
internal methods of managing driversí attitudes, emotions, and habits of
thinking in order to influence the norms of driving in a society or region.
Driving psychology provides the theory and methods for creating this type of
internal influence by securing the voluntary cooperation and support of drivers
for lifelong self-improvement activities. These internal methods are fully
effective in the long run since they are incorporated into the personality and
moral philosophy of each driver. Internal influence cannot be coerced since
drivers can fake attitudes and can momentarily comply during inspection or
testing. As soon as surveillance is withdrawn or eluded, the negative attitude
asserts itself in freedom. Therefore, internal influence is possible only
through the voluntary cooperation of each individual. This voluntary
cooperation can be engineered by means of the social influencing process that
naturally occurs in small groups like the Quality Driving Circles (QDCs). Long
term QDC membership erodes people's natural resistance to habit change and
builds enthusiasm for practicing collectivist and supportive driving scripts,
schemas, roles, and norms (James and Nahl, 1997)

In addition, the new driving norms that these
socio-cultural methods create in each community, are
then spontaneously adopted from their parents by the current generation of
children who will form the next wave of drivers in the region. The new, more
supportive driving norms, along with more collectivist expectations about
traffic, can be expected to have long term benefits to both the individual and
society. It has been observed that individualistic and competitive expectations
lead drivers to be aggressive and hostile towards other road users. This
aggressive frame of mind can generalize to other interactive settings such as the
workplace and the family, creating higher stress and greater conflict.
Similarly, the more supportive and collectivist expectations can be expected to
generalize to other social settings, creating less stress and conflict, and
more satisfaction and calmness throughout one's daily round of activities.
Thus, driving psychology is also a health-enhancing practice.

Driving psychology can draw on the methodology
used in allied fields such as behavior management techniques for self-modification
(Watson and Tharp, 1985) and rational-emotive integration (Ellis and Grieger,
1977).† As well, group dynamic techniques
for engineering new generational norms (James,
1997b) and developing moral and social intelligence (Kohlberg, 1976; Goleman,
1995).† The lifelong driver
self-improvement curriculum is grounded in the behavioral self-assessment of
driving habits (skills and errors) within the driver's threefold self
(affective, cognitive, sensorimotor).†
This feature can be used in self-assessment as well as in setting standards
for testing, licensing, and rewarding or punishing (socially, economically, and
legally). The behavioral self-assessment data generated by QDCs can be
collected in national databases allowing scientists to construct behavioral
maps of driving by region and demographic variables.† These maps provide statistical information on
the internal world of drivers such as the relative distribution of negative
emotions in a region over time.† I
estimate that there are about 10 billion negative mini-interactions (lasting
just a couple of seconds) that occur annually between the 125 million drivers
who are daily on the road in the U.S.† The behavioral self-assessment feature of
QDCs can provide a representative sample of these interactions for accurate
appraisal of the quality of driving life, and its regional monitoring by
scientists and government agencies.† QDC
members produce these behavioral self-assessment records as a by-product of the
baseline-intervention method of their self-modification plan.† Part of the quality of life of a city, state,
or region may be the driving climate as measured by the annual number of
supportive vs. aggressive exchanges one has there.† Theoretically it should be possible to devise
zoning or traffic claming methods that make use of driving behavior maps for
particular regions or segments of a highway, by adjusting regulations to fit
the driving norms, or by special initiatives targeting troublesome behaviors by
a rebellious minority.

Meichenbaum,
D. and Goodman, S. (1979) Clinical use of private speech and critical questions
about its study in natural settings. In G. Zivin (Ed.), The Development of Self-Regulation Through Private Speech. New
York: Wiley.

Michon,
J.A. (1985) A critical view of driver behavior models: What do we know, what
should we do? In L. Evans and R.C. Schwing (Eds.). Human Behavior and Traffic Safety. New York: Plenum Press. Pp.
485-520.

Nahl, Diane.
(1993). CD-ROM Point-of-Use Instructions for Novice Searchers: A Comparison of
User-Centered Affectively Elaborated and System-Centered Unelaborated Text. Ph.D. Dissertation University of Hawaii, 1993. Available on
the Web at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~nahl/articles/phd/phdtoc.html